Friday, 25 November 2016
NORTHERN Tablelands MP Adam Marshall is calling out primary school students from across his electorate to tag a monster piece of machinery set to land on the $60 million Armidale Hospital redevelopment.
The MP is backing a community competition to name the crane that’s set to do the heavy lifting on the construction site next year.
So what’s in a name? Well, a bucket of bucks to put it simply.
Mr Marshall said the project team for the new hospital building project had organised for a crane naming contest that could drop a big bucket of $1,000 in educational spending on the winning school.
“This is a great way of getting the community more involved in the project that will mean so much to so many people and I’m hoping kids right across the Northern Tablelands will take up the challenge,” Mr Marshall said.
He’s encouraging primary school principals and heads of school in the Armidale Regional Council area and in Uralla shire to give their students a bit of fun homework – come up with a name for the massive crane that will inhabit the hospital site from next year.
Mr Marshall said the Armidale Hospital General Manager Wendy Mulligan was hoping to get classes across the region involved.
“The Name the Crane competition is a common community participation event that infrastructure program leaders choose to run to allow school children and the general community to feel part of the project,” Mr Marshall said.
“It’s a chance for young students to get creative in the classroom and suggest the type of a name a 32-metre high steel crane should have in a town like Armidale.
“It’s a great end-of-year educational exercise – but it carries some heavy weight too: there’s $1,000 in educational resource vouchers for the winning student’s school, so that’s an extra incentive.”
The winning name will be announced after 10 December and it will go up on signage on the site. Letters with competition information are being mailed to schools this week.
Mr Marshall turned the first sod on the construction of the $60 million Armidale Hospital redevelopment three weeks ago which includes a new four-storey building and a refurbished reconstruct of some of the existing building.
The project will deliver a new emergency department, new critical care unit, new in-patient ward, new operating theatres and a new sterilising unit, improved day stay and mortuary facilities.